Hannah Lynn Tells Greek Myth from Medusa's Perspective in Athena's Child

Multi-award winning novelist, Hannah Lynn, visits us to discuss her first historical fiction novel, Athena’s Child. Her story, which is a retelling of the myth of Medusa, was the 2020 Gold Medalist at the Independent Publisher’s Award. As for what drew her to write this version of the ancient tale, Lynn said, “…I was drawn to it because, I think, we all know Medusa. We all know the Gorgon who turned men to stone, this evil, vicious beast, and there’s another side to that story. There is the story of how she became that monster, and I wanted to share that. I wanted to make that known, to switch the narrative on her, from being a monster to a far more rounded victim, mortal at the time, wronged woman, and so as soon as I’d started, I was enthralled and I had to try and do her story justice.” While there are multiple versions of Medusa, Lynn decided to write her story according to the later versions of this mythical creature. “…It is a minefield when you are writing mythology because there are so many different versions of stories….there are versions where she was born the Gorgon monster, but there’s also a version which I followed here, where she was not born a monster, she was actually born human…”

Regarding her writing process, Lynn prefers to plot out her work first. “I at least know where the end is, but I much prefer having an outline. It’s a lot quicker. If I spend a few days to work out that outline and then I sit and write, it’s a lot quicker and it also means that not so much goes in the trash bin when I’m editing it, whereas I find when I pants it, I’m like, ‘It was beautiful, it’s gotta go, it’s gotta go…’ Plotting does avoid that for me.” Although Lynn has written many pieces of work, she felt only some of her writing were worth a second or third draft. She remarked, “I’ve got many books, some first draft, some second, that have not made the cut in publishing, but I don’t believe every book is for publishing. Some are for learning, and I have a couple of books that were learning books.”

For those aspiring to become full time writers, Lynn has some words of wisdom. “For starters, you can’t give up on it so if this is what you want, don’t expect it to come immediately… when I started writing Amendments… 8-9 years that it took me. If it’s what you want, you just don’t have expectations. Don’t think that this book is going to be the next big thing because I’ve had so many moments where I’m like, ‘This is it. This is it. This is it. No it’s not, no it’s not!’ …Don’t place all your eggs in that basket. If your first book doesn’t do as well as you think it’s going as you wanted it to, as you thought it was going to, then you write the next one. And if the second one doesn’t do as well as you thought, then you write the third one… know that it’s completely possible, but you just can’t give up on it. If you give up on it, you’re never going to get there.”